In the light of Colter’s own later attempt to trace his route for Captain Clark, and through our knowledge of today’s maps, it can be assumed, with a fair degree of reliability, that he moved across country to Pryor’s Fork, up that stream and down Gap Creek to its junction with the Big Horn, thence up the Big Horn to the Shoshone (Stinking Water). He followed the course of the Shoshone upstream to the vicinity of what is now Cody, Wyoming, and along the base of the Absaroka Mountains into the Wind River Valley, striking the Wind probably some distance south and east of present day Dubois. It appears that it was on the Stinking Water that Colter discovered the area which his contemporaries of the trapping fraternity derisively named “Colter’s Hell,” after Colter’s description of the thermal features there. Historians writing many years later, perhaps more romantically than accurately, attributed Colter’s reference to one or more of the now famous geyser and hot springs sections of the Yellowstone. It makes a better story thus, but the preponderance of evidence from the accounts of the trappers themselves places “Colter’s Hell” in the vicinity of the DeMaris Springs, near Cody. Geological indications are that the area was much more active, insofar as thermal phenomena are concerned, then than now. Two excellent early authorities confirm this location of “Colter’s Hell.” As set forth in Burton Harris’ _John Colter, His Years in the Rockies_: As late as 1848, the accomplished Belgian priest, Father DeSmet, placed Colter’s Hell on the Stinking Water on the strength of information obtained from the few trappers who were left in the mountains at that date. The courageous priest, known as “Black Robe” to the Indians, was on his way to visit the Sioux in 1848 when he wrote the following account: “Near the source of the River Puante (Stinking Water, now called Shoshone) which empties into the Big Horn, and the sulphurous waters of which have probably the same medicinal qualities as the celebrated Blue Lick Springs of Kentucky, is a place called Colter’s Hell—from a beaver hunter of that name. This locality is often agitated with subterranean fires. The sulphurous gases which escape in great volumes from the burning soil infect the atmosphere for several miles, and render the earth so barren that even the wild wormwood cannot grow on it. The beaver hunters have assured me that the frequent underground noises and explosions are frightful.” Washington Irving, in _The Rocky Mountains_: (1837) says: